WASHINGTON – Ella Fitzgerald – the First Lady of Song – is being honored on a new postage stamp.
The 39-cent stamp will be released Wednesday at ceremonies at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, and will be on sale across the country. It’s the 30th stamp in the Black Heritage series.
“She would be very honored, very pleased and a little surprised,” said Ray Brown Jr., Fitzgerald’s son. “She didn’t go through life expecting all the accolades that she got. She was just happy to do her thing and be the best that she could be.”
People who don’t know about her will see the stamp and think: “What makes this person special? And perhaps find out about the person and about the music,” he added.
Phoebe Jacobs, executive vice president of The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and a longtime friend of Fitzgerald, described the singer as “a very private lady, very humble.”
Over the years, Fitzgerald won 13 Grammy Awards and many other honors, including the National Medal of Arts.
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